Her eyes flew wide open and she stared at him, stuttering.
“Funny thing about dreams,” he said softly. “They let you be yourself in the dark. When you can be yourself in the morning, too, you’ll be cured.”
“Cured of what?” she said in a disgruntled whisper.
Jack chuckled. “Dreams,” he said. “You won’t need ‘em.”
Beebo was relieved when he went back to sleep. There was no escaping now what she was. The dancing lovers in the Colophon had impressed it indelibly on her. And yet Jack wanted her to confirm it in so many words, and the idea terrified her. It would be like accepting a label for the rest of her life—a label she didn’t even understand yet.
And there was no one to tell her that the time would come when the label wouldn’t frighten her; when she would be happy simply to be what she was.
They went a while longer without discussing it. Jack was on the verge of confronting Beebo a dozen times with his own homosexuality. But she would catch the look in his eye and warn him with tacit signs to keep still. He began to wonder if she understood about him at all. He had tried to make it obvious the night they went barhopping. He wanted to say to her, “Okay, I’m gay. But that doesn’t make me less human, less moral, less normal than other men. You’ve got the same bug, Beebo; only with you, it’s girls. Look at me: I’m proof you can live with it. You don’t need to hate yourself or the people you’re attracted to.”
But if she saw it she kept it to herself. She’s too wrapped up in discovering herself to discover me too, he thought. He tried to kid her. “You think it’s all right for the other girls but not for Beebo,” he said, but she wouldn’t give him a smile. He felt stumped in front of her stubborn silence; aching to help her, afraid of scaring her into an emotional crack-up.
She was very tense. And then one evening, about a week after her night out with Jack, over dinner she said, “Mona was in the shop again. I talked to her.”
Jack looked up in surprise. “What about?”
“I asked if she was Mona Petry. She is.” She seemed afraid to elaborate.
“Is that all?” he smiled.
“You were right about her—she’s gay.” She looked up to catch the smile.
“Did she say so?” he asked.
“No, Pete said so after she left. He said he used to date her but he dropped her when he found out.”
“Well, he’s got it backwards, but never mind. The point is, Mona’s a slippery little bitch. She’s good to look at but she isn’t any fun. She’s out to screw the whole damn world. If I were you—”
“Jackson, I don’t give a damn what you think of Mona Petry,” Beebo said.
“Then why bring her up?”
She colored, and put down a few more bites of the dinner they were eating. Finally, slowly, with her face still pink, she said, “Do you think it would be all right if I went out tonight? I mean—alone?”
“If you eat all your spinach.”
“I am asking you,” she said hotly, “because I value your judgment. Not because I’m an addlepated child.”
“All right,” he said, smiling into his napkin. “Where do you want to go?”
She looked at her plate. “The Colophon,” she said, making him strain to hear it.
“Why? Want to drop a bomb on the dance floor?”
She sighed. “Pete says Mona hangs out there.”
“In that case, I don’t think it’s safe,” he said flatly. “But it should be educational.”
She said, “Jack, I’m scared. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared of anything in my life.”
“It’s no disgrace to be scared, Beebo. Only to act like it.”
“I feel as if that damn silly bar—the people in it—are a sort of challenge,” she said, fumbling to express it justly. “As if I have to go back or I’ll never know …” She shook her head with a self-conscious smile. “That’s a hell of a place to go looking for yourself.”
“Hell of a place to go looking for Mona,” he said. “I don’t know though, pal. It has to come sooner or later. It’s time you learned a thing or two. You’re naïve, but you’re no fool. Go on—but go slow.”
Mona was not at the Colophon that night, or for many nights afterward. In a way, Beebo was relieved. She wanted to meet her, but she wanted time to meet other people too, to see other places, and cruise around the Village without any pressure on her to prove things to herself. Or to a worldly girl like Mona Petry. Beebo was still a stranger in a strange town, unsure, and grateful for a chance to learn unobserved.
She would sit and gaze for hours at the girls in the bars or passing in the streets. She wanted to talk to them, see what they were like. She was often drawn to one enough to daydream about her, but she never mentioned it to Jack. Still, she was eagerly curious about the Lesbian mores and social codes. The gay girls seemed so smooth and easy with each other, talking about shared experiences in a special slang, like members of an exclusive sorority.
Beebo, watching them as the days and weeks passed, became slowly aware how much she envied them. She wanted to join the in-group. And she would watch them longingly and wonder if their talk was ever about her. It was.
A few of Jack’s friends, who had met her in his company, would come up and talk with her, and knowing for certain that they were Lesbians gave Beebo a vibrant pleasure, whether or not the girls themselves were exciting. Looking at one she would think, She knows how it feels to want what I want. I could make her happy. I know it. Even the word “Lesbian,” which had offended her before, began to sound wonderful in her ears.
She shocked herself with such candid thoughts, but that was only at first. Little by little, it began to seem beautiful to her that two women could come together with passion and intelligence and make a life with and for each other; make a marriage. She dreamed of lovely, sophisticated women at her feet, aware even as she dreamed that she hadn’t yet the savoir faire to win such a woman. But she was afire with ambition to acquire it.
She would walk into a bar, order a beer, and sit alone and silent through an evening. In her solitude, she seemed mysterious to the laughing chattering people around her. They began to point her out when she came in.
At first, ignorance and inexperience kept Beebo aloof. But she quickly understood that her refusal to be sociable made her the target of a lot of smiling speculation. When she got over being afraid of the situation, it amused her. The fact that she attracted girls, even ones she knew she would never pursue, was almost supernaturally strange and exciting to her. She submitted to their teasing questions with an enigmatic smile until she realized that one or two had worked themselves up to infatuation pitch over her.
There followed a period of elation when she walked into Julian’s or the Cellar and saw the eyes she knew had waited all night to look into hers turn and flash in her direction. She always passed them by and went to a seat at the bar. But each time she came closer to stopping and answering a smile or asking someone to join her in a beer. And still, she couldn’t find Mona.
The only wrong note in the tune was a boy, slight and fine-featured, who watched her and seemed to have persuaded himself that he loved her. He fell for her with an awkward crush that embarrassed them both. Often, at the end of an evening when he was pretty high, he would approach her and timidly offer to buy her a drink.
Beebo kept turning him